Xiaomi picks Nokia to interconnect its data centres

Nokia is providing Xiaomi, a consumer electronics manufacturer and internet service provider in China, with a state-of-the-art optical transmission network linking seven data centres in the Beijing region.

The new network will enable the fast-growing company to reduce bottlenecks in Xiaomi’s data transport network and bring higher-speed, lower latency internet services to its customers. This will enable Xiaomi to tie together its data centres to effectively establish a private cloud that it can use to support its internal data management needs.

For this project, Nokia is providing Xiaomi with its data centre interconnect (DCI) products, based on the company's 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) and managed by its Network Services Platform. The 1830 PSS is a high-performance DWDM platform that delivers the capacity, security and control required for enterprise data centre networks.

This deal also highlights the growing momentum behind Nokia's strategy to expand its customer base to organizations outside of the traditional telecommunications sphere. It is targeting industry verticals such as finance, healthcare providers and ‘webscale’ companies, who have increasing needs for data transport.

Drazen Lukic, head of China IP and optical networks business group at Nokia, said: “As large enterprises in China and around the world look to take advantage of the benefits of private cloud, Nokia's data centre interconnect solution offers an ideal way of bringing together geographically distributed assets to form a single, high-performance cloud. This initiative is enabling Xiaomi to maximise network capacity, address fast-growing traffic demands and enjoy the flexibility of the cloud with the security, reliability and performance of a private network.”

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